I am Swig, welcome to my travel blog and thanks for joining me on the journey of traveling the World! This blog is a resource to anyone interested in traveling. With the help of travel stories, personal experiences, and photos I plan to help new and experienced travelers. My hope is to inspire people to to do something new and unfamiliar.

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page." -Saint Augustine

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Sunday, 17 February 2013

The Secret to Long Term Traveling

What is the secret of being able to travel for a long term? I have gotten a lot of questions about how I afford to travel so I thought this would be a great article to explain. You don't need to be a millionaire or win the lottery to travel, just need to re-arrange your priorities. This is a great article written by Nomadic Matt outlining the secrets to being able to travel for a extended period! The hardest part is taking the first step, or leap. Once you realize some countries are extremely cheap to live/travel in and you re-arrange your priorities...it's pretty simple from there. For example the top rated hostel I stayed at in Kiev, Ukraine cost $5 a night and I spent about $10-15 a day on food (2 meals from decent restaurants). I'll be talking more about this in another post on, "why your perception of traveling is flawed."

The Secret to Long Term Traveling

By Nomadic Matt | Published January 28th, 2009

I get a lot of emails asking for my secret. People read my posts about how I manage to travel but still wonder if I am holding something back. What am I leaving out? What, they ask, is my secret to escaping the cubicle and being a nomad? Did I win the lottery? Do I have a trust fund? There must be something that makes me so special.

I’m so sick of these emails that I am finally going to spill the beans. I will probably get kicked out of the secret club of travelers for this, and Rolf Potts and Bill Bryson will probably send their goons after me, but I will let everyone in on our big secret because you deserve to know.

The big secret to traveling long term is….nothing. There is no special secret.

Vagabonds, nomads, and long term travelers are nothing special. We have no super powers or secret Swiss bank accounts. I used to think these types of people were special – unique for what they were doing. They had found the secret to breaking free from the cubicle I was so chained to. I was jealous. I was envious. I was determined to live this romantic life of travel, globetrotting around the world and having amazing adventures that you only read about.

But once I got on the road, I saw that their secret was that there was no secret. Lots of people did this. It wasn’t special. It wasn’t unique. I had left thinking I was going on an exciting adventure few people go on – then I went to Khao San Rd and hung out in Amsterdam during the summer. I met travelers young and old doing exactly the same thing as me and none of them were trust fund babies either. Nope, I wasn’t special. Lots of people did this. Just none of them happened to be my friends from home.

Extended travel is a big deal around the world. The gap year is a rite of passage for many people. It is normal to take a year or two to live and work somewhere else around the world. In some countries, it is actually abnormal not to. The problem is one of those countries is not America, which is why I thought it was something special. However, I quickly found that it didn’t take any fancy footwork or large bank accounts. All these people had that I didn’t have before was the desire to do what they want to do, free of the expectations of society, because they enjoyed it and that was all the reason they needed. They simply said “I want to travel” and then did it and made it work.

They did what they wanted – a revolutionary idea for me at the time. But after years of travel, I realize that it’s not so revolutionary. If people really want something, people do it. If you want a big screen TV or a DVD, you go buy it. If you really want to eat sushi for dinner, you are going to have sushi for dinner. If you want to travel, you will do that too. It is that simple. Just like you find a way to pay for that TV or your new car, these travelers simply arranged their life so that they could afford to travel. As the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

People ask me about whether I worry about bills, retirement, and yada, yada, yada. When you travel, all those things disappear. I have no bills now. Just what I spend day to day. I’m a big believer in the idea that we shouldn’t work our life away and that we should take short breaks from it to pursue our passions. Why should I spend my best years in an office, saving money for an age I may not even see or, if I do see, might be too sick to enjoy? Yeah, we long term travelers save a bit for a rainy day, but we don’t worry about the future. We enjoy now. Take care of your present and your future works out. When I stop traveling, I’ll figure out what is next.

So when you ask travelers how they do it, they aren’t lying when they say they did nothing special and that there is no secret. We simply made a conscious decision to do it and, after that, just worked toward our goal, saving money and making plans just like what you would do with any other venture in your life.

About Me

I am Swiggy. I write. I travel. I Drink. I eat. And I'm hungry...for MORE!. I am a 20 something American from St. Louis, Missouri. After graduating college, I packed up my life into a backpack and booked a 1-way ticket to Europe. My home away from home was the wonderful city of Prague, then I moved to Australia for 6 months. Currently I live in South Korea and am studying my MBA. Slight addictions are traveling, music, friends, and playing sports.

One of my Life Goals is to travel to every country in the world...Currently at 42!